(If you haven’t read our very important December 17th update, please do so before reading this update: A Long Journey)

Greetings Backers!

First off, we hope you all will have a wonderful New Year’s evening celebration!

Today’s topics will be HADES 9’s Commander’s system and how we are planning to reach out to you in the future.

1. HADES 9’s Commander system. While playing RTS games, we have all had that one unit that survived against all odds while doing some amazing things they shouldn’t really be doing normally. That one volksgrenadier squad in Company of Heroes which manages to clear and capture an Allied Anti-Tank gun which they then use to take out an Allied tank column. Or the tank in C&C generals who hold a choke point on its own vs multiple waves of enemies and as a result of its achievements upgrades its main cannon to fire mini nukes!

Classically RTS games have highlighted these heroic units with a simple veterancy system. However, since we are expanding the classic RTS into a fully persistent environment we wanted to expand this system too. To better fit our game, a heroic unit is now not just one that did very well in a 20 min skirmish, but rather it’s one that has survived for weeks and destroyed countless ships while never failing you.

Enter, your Commanders!Every escort ship is captained by a Commander, in addition to that your capital ship Bridge is manned by a team of commanders. As commanders gain experience they will unlock new traits that will affect the ship they are on. In addition to these traits, more advanced escort ships require higher-ranking commanders to captain them.

Gaining ExperienceIf a ship is not manned by a commander its crew will promote a fresh one internally. Over time, as the commander survives combat and missions, the commander gains enough experience to be promoted to a higher rank upon return to Hades.

Ranking up in the beginning, is not very difficult. Even reaching the point where a commander can captain a basic battleship or dreadnought will not take long. However, there is still a lot higher up the ranks they can go, specializing more as they progress. Due to this, higher ranking commanders also introduce more depth into fleet-design: you may have a very high ranking commander who specializes in maneuverability, which would be a bit of a waste to put on a long-range torpedo battery escort. However, a commander who has drilled his crew to near perfection and is an expert at internal logistics would be excellent on the aforementioned ship, as he would be primarily reducing reload times of the silos.

Losing commandersCommanders in control of the escort ships in your fleet can be killed when the ship they serve on is lost. When a ship is lost for whatever reason (combat, environmental hazards, etc.) the commander will escape in his command pod so the player has a chance to pick him up during a rescue operation.

Commanders as an assetThis may be a bit dark, however so is the rest of Hades. In addition to leveling up your commanders from zero, you can also trade commanders with other players. One of the main reasons for this is because we wanted to introduce an asset that combat-focused players could sell. Too often we see combat players being forced to do activities they don't enjoy to make money, such as maintain cargo routes or mining, just so they don’t go bankrupt. This is something we want to avoid. We will also have mercenary systems and cargo drops from destroying other players ships, however even many other games who have these systems as well still at some point or another end up forcing combat-focused players to do tedious tasks they do not enjoy just to stay competitive financially.

Commanders on the bridgeThe commanders who join you on your capital ship are safe from death, so even in a total fleet destruction scenario you won’t lose any commanders you’ve placed on your capital ship. However, being safe and sound on your capital ship instead of out on the front lines does mean reduce the rate at which they gain experience.

2. Communicating with our backersOne of the first things we will organize in the new year is the way we communicate with our community. Throughout January more and more of our social media (Facebook & twitter), our website (hades9.com), and streaming platforms will go live (Twitch & YouTube). So please follow us there if you are interested in staying up to date with the newest information about the game!

That was it for this update, we hope to see you again in the next year for more HADES 9 updates and news.

We at Legion Tech wish you all a happy end to 2017, and a great 2018!- Nick, Matt, Dan, and Luuk

If I really did not like a person, (or just wanted to be a bit of an ass) could I do the following things after killing them in PvP (Or seeing them die in PvE)?

-- Attack them when they return so they cannot reach their Commander Pod to rescue their commander. -- Pick up their Commander Pod and offer to sell it back to them. -- Destroy their Commander Pod -- Lure Aliens to their Commander Pod so they will kill it or Capture it. -- ETC

Flatlander wrote:If I really did not like a person, (or just wanted to be a bit of an ass) could I do the following things after killing them in PvP (Or seeing them die in PvE)?

-- Attack them when they return so they cannot reach their Commander Pod to rescue their commander. -- Pick up their Commander Pod and offer to sell it back to them. -- Destroy their Commander Pod -- Lure Aliens to their Commander Pod so they will kill it or Capture it. -- ETC

Our current train of thought is if player losses his whole fleet its unlikely he can return for his commanders. what the exact system in place will be is undecided, probably a short time limit where you must recover your commanders in combat, but not long enough for you to return to the sight. Commanders are meant to die, often, similar to Xcom squadies. However, your best commanders that you put on your bridge with you are always safe.

I was under the impression that you would have much more ships in the Space-Hub than you would take with you on missions.

I remember explicitly that we can only have one Flagship outside of the Space-Hub at a time and different Flagships would have different passives and actives to assist your fleet.So you wouldn't want to bring your short-range bombers, if you are using a long-ranged flagship (Unless you are doing a mixed build or something).

I thought generally you'd die, lose your stuff and have floating commander pods and broken modules floating around in space. Then I assume (hope) you have some sort of story-based explanation as to why your commanders on your Flagship don't die (Such as the Flagship's Bridge also acts as a FTL-escape-pod that auto-pilots back to the space hub upon death to save you and your most trusted commanders) -- Death animation would show your flagship blow up right after the Bridge Detaches and FTLs out of there.

If you die once, and lose everything, and then have to wait to re-build your fleet, that would be terrible. (I assume building ships takes time and/or lots of money)

Players should be encouraged to have tons of extra ships stored in the space-hub, and you should limit the amount they can bring out with them in the field. So that when they die multiple times they can continue playing.

Flatlander wrote:I was under the impression that you would have much more ships in the Space-Hub than you would take with you on missions.

That's correct, what I mean is that escape pods will probably have a very short time limits to pick up before the inhabitants die, its not meant for you to be able to always go back and get what you lost, more as a way to pick them up and run before losing everything.

everything on your fleet can be stockpiled on hades 9 even commanders, for this reason, we want there to be a constant flow of commanders and escorts being lost. If we allow everything you dropped to sit around waiting for you to return to pick it up you end up with the Dayz group unbalance, where if you are in a group big enough, you never lose anything and the game stagnates.

Dayz group unbalance: in days pvp, after an engagement, the group who is left with people alive gets all of the gear, both the gear their teammates drops as well as the gear the enemy dropped. This creates a game-breaking positive feedback loop where if your group has more people then the majority of the enemy groups you encounter, you will never need to find new gear, because even if YOU die, your group will win, and they will just wait for you to respawn and come back to pick up your gear. this removes the cost of a individuals loss and also removes there motivation for progression. if you already have all the max level commanders you need for your fleet and a few extra, and you haven't lost any of them in months because you are always flying in an undefeatable armada, then you lose motivation to stockpile which removes one of the driving motivations in the game.

also if gear and commanders are being created all of the time, we need a way to remove them from circulation as well, again in dayz you will see old servers have all groups of players geared with insanely rare things that very very few players should have, and they do because the only way to "remove" top tier gear from the game is for a player to die to zombies and no one knows where his body is. and if your good enough to get fully kitted out with top tier gear, you won't be dieing to zombies, so the number of top-tier gear items per server just goes increasing exponentially until veteran players have infinite amounts of it, but it's still insanely hard for new players to get it.

Basically, a runaway positive feedback loop where every member of the group who won gets stronger and losses almost nothing, but every member of the group who lost losses everything that can be lost.

P.S. these also allows players to get a few good blows in before they die if they know they will lose they could try to take as many commanders with them as possible, so the victory is costly. Which I think will make everyone even meta players approach pvp combat with stress and concerns, making victory all the sweater.